Syera, this is a truly valuable article, thanks a lot for the info. What is really cool (and I can't stress it enough) is that now the offspring of my custom-skinned sims can have an intermediate skin in relation to their parents

Thanks JMP and Sleepycat, you are right, changing the values in the genetic field will also induce the behavior I described.
I'll just quote Syera's text, highlighting the part I skimmed previously

This is a bit offtopic and I don't know if it's related to anything, but one of my last born-in-game sims - apparently not affected by all this mess - is a bit of an oddity: the parents are dark and tan skinned (originally were Uni townies, so they are homozygous), but the child has medium-dark skin!

Here is the relevant data as seen in SimPE:
Parent A (dominant & recessive):
 - Skintone : 4
 - Skintone range: 4
Parent B (dominant & recessive):
 - Skintone : 2
 - Skintone range: 2
Child:
(dominant)
 - Skintone : 3
 - Skintone range : 4
(recessive)
 - Skintone : 3
 - Skintone range : 2

How could the game assume that genetic mixing of dark and tan skins would generate a medium-dark skin? Perhaps hidden game data, or an imminent BFBVFOS ?

I don't think so, I've used its functions in all my neighborhoods. The only difference is that in my Strangetown I kept all the sim DNA entries (at that time I didn't know that those records were somehow linked to the sim description).



Same here, but considering that some of that data was wrong anyway - after I changed the genetic weight of the custom skins - I'm sure my Gameplay/Maintenance time ratio will remain reasonably low

In my experience, this problem is not related to any expansion/patch issue, but may be due to the deletion of sim DNA entries in the neighbordood file (I'm using SimPE)

I inspected my Pleasantview data, and asserted that only my last four born in game sims had their DNA correct! 

I had manually deleted many townies before (as well as other "surgery sims"), following these steps:

• delete sim's memories
• delete sim's relations
• delete sim's wants/fears entry
• delete sim's DNA entry
• delete sim's Description entry
• finally delete character file

This fact alone wouldn't confirm it, but then I recalled that in my Strangetown - wich I had not played for a long time - I had also deleted characters, with the only difference being that time I didn't delete any DNA and wants/fears entries (ignorance is bliss ?).

In that neighborhood, my sims DNA appeared to be correct.

Sim babies rock!

The Invisible Cursor - it's a curse!
Fortunately, the debug messages are shown in the same position always, but if you don't keep track of the cursor position, then it's chaos, as you'll have to start from one of the screen corners and (slowly) bring the cursor over the buttons

Hi TrueLou,

I've had the same problem over and over, and the only hint i can give you is to remember the position of the mouse cursor 

The exact same thing happened to my sims , most of the times a sim that had been subject of a facial surgery (using SimPe's sim surgery) would end up with the face like that, especially after growing up.
But it was cured simply by changing appearance with a mirror, so it's just a(nother) minor glitch.

You could try to enter into debug mode before loading the lot, and see if any error messages appear.
I've had some exported lots not loading due to corrupt/invalid object controllers, so the only way to get rid of them is to click "Delete" if any message appears.